August 22, 2015

Touchy feely

I’ve been feeding Blondie the feral cat for 8 years. But I’ve never touched her. Except for once or twice when my hand accidentally brushed across her head while I was trying to put the cat food in the cat food dish (Blondie was so eager to get at the food that she pushed her head in between the dish and my hand). She would always recoil at the human touch. She’d immediately jump back 10 or 15 feet away from me. Then she’d sort of glare at me. Like I had violated her or something. Cats.

So this was a bit of a surprise. This morning I was at my campsite, lying on my side eating a turkey and swiss cheese sandwich. When Blondie suddenly touched me. She sort of swatted at my back with her paw. As a way of getting my attention. Ya’ know? Like: “Would it really kill you to share some of that turkey and swiss cheese with your faithful feral cat?”

So I rolled over on my back and gave Blondie a good, long look. Because it was like we were entering new juncture in our relationship (as it were). And, to my surprise, Blondie actually climbed on top of chest. Stood there staring at me for 10 or 20 seconds. Like she’s thinking: “Ya know, all these years I’ve always kind of wanted to do this. And now, here I finally am. The king of the mountain.”

Then she hopped off my chest. I gave her a big chunk of turkey and swiss cheese. Which she gobbled up as if she was starving to death. And we both lived happily ever after. The end.

Yeah. The drought has everybody here in Berkeley paranoid about forest fires. There’s a huge project under-foot to start clear-cutting massive amounts of trees in the Berkeley/Oakland hills. I tried to explain to the authorities that feral cats need those trees to live under. To no avail. The fascists.